The Global Queer Politics book series is a new outlet for research on political and social processes that contest dominant heteronormative orders in both legal and policy frames and cultural formations. It presents studies encompassing all aspects of queer politics, understood in the expansive terms of much activism as addressing the politics of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and intersex status, as well as non-heteronormative sexualities and genders more widely -including emerging identities such as asexual, pansexual, or non-binary. As struggles over violence, human rights and inequalities have become more prominent in world politics, this series provides a forum to challenge retrenchments of inequalities, and new forms of contestation, criminalization and persecution, situated in wider geopolitics. Particularly welcome are works attentive to multiple inequalities, such as related to class and caste, race and ethnicity, nationalism, religion, disability and age, imperialism and colonialism. Global, regional, transnational, comparative and national studies are welcome, but that speak to international processes.The Global Queer Politics book series welcomes:All academic disciplines and approaches that can contribute to the study of politics, including, but not limited to, international relations, political theory, sociology, socio-legal studies, contemporary history, social policy, development, public policy, cultural studies, media studies and gender and sexuality studies.

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In the last 20 years, several countries in Latin America have sought uneven and disparate legal transformations affecting the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and collectives. These new legal measures have taken place simultaneously, with deepening structures of social, gender, and sexual injustice challenging their view as indicators of progressive change. In this contradictory context, LGBT social policies have emerged as a specialized field of state action because of two parallel trends: the macro political politics affecting the region, and the accumulated experience of gender and sexual social mobilizations in their interactions with the state. There are many variations of this emerging field of social policies because it is shaped by the meaning provided by local actors such as interest groups, activists, and policy makers, and their translation into policy lobbying, policymaking, and policy negotiation. As result of these innovations, gender identity and sexual orientation have nowadays entered into the language of policymaking and policy implementation. These legal measures have opened spaces for social and political participation that were not there before. Nevertheless, LGBT policies are new regimes of governmentality that control the inclusion of gender and sexual social mobilizations into citizenship and democracy.

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Initiatives to politically mobilize lesbian women and gay men in Latin America have had parallel and interrelated paths in progressive social movements, leftist organizations, and communist parties since early 1970s. The first waveof organizations focused on deconstructing social ideas and stereotypes related to lesbian and gay people and denounced sexual oppression. The 1980s witnessed political opportunities in some countries. Human rights activism was a key element in the struggle for redemocratization. For homosexual militancy, it was the beginning of activism framed into rights discourses and the fight for equality. Lesbian activism inside the feminist movement continued its expansion at regional levels. It was also at this time that Latin America started to suffer the consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The need to create policies to deal with the impact of AIDS forced a closer working relationship among gay men's organizations, international cooperation agencies, and health services. The beginning of the new century witnessed two important changes in Latin American LGBT activism: a more institutionalized, rights‐based organization, with a closer relationship to state institutions; and a diversification and exponential increment in the number of groups, not only of gay men, but also of lesbians and transgender people.